Anyone familiar with water meters ? UPDATE

Our service off the main goes through a 3/4 meter right off the curb, then a galvanized pipe to our hose bib/entrance point on side of house then to the side where an old water softener used to be. Thats where the house shutoff is. Handy when your replacing faucet o-rings. We can hear the water running when our hose is running and when we heard it running once with no faucets open we knew we had a leak somewhere. We found a rotted point where the hose bib was 18" below the dirt line. Dug it up, lots of mud. Cut back and threaded the good side and ran PEX up to the hose bib. 6 years so far so good. Our leak happened right after the city cracked the fire hydrant in front of our house. Plumber buddy told me they probably shut it off too quickly and that caused a hydroshock wave to take out any compromised pipe around it. Sounds about right.